After successfully completing Link Tube Madness which was basically a proof of concept on building a complete hardline loop using nothing but G1/4 tapped link tube I decided I would use the same method for a new mITX portable gaming rig. I made up my mind that this would be a zero compromise overclockable and quiet gaming rig. After deciding on and purchasing the In-Win A1 case my dreams soon fell to the harsh realities of the cases design. The In-Win A1 only officially supports a single 120 RAD at the back, simply not enough RAD capacity to cool a Zotac 1080ti mini and the 8700K overclocked to 5.0Ghz. I thought there HAS to be a way to get a 240 RAD in there somewhere. First attempt I tried to fit a black Ice GTS 240 RAD into the clear base with slim fans. No dice! Just as I was experimenting with my options and searching for parts XSPC comes to the rescue and releases their brand new TX ultra slim Rads on Performance PCS. These are the slimmest Rads on the market at 20.1mm thick!!! That's thinner that a regular 120 Fan(25mm) Amazing! Well the rest is history as you can see in the pics, I managed to fit a fully water cooled itx setup in a very small case. The biggest sacrifice I had to make was having to live without a proper reservoir. The downside to not having a res is it takes much longer to bleed the system of air. My solution was to fit a bitspower T-Block and have small link with Air Exhaust fitting on top. This helps with getting the air out and allows me to add fluid as necessary.

Looking forward to what everyone thinks in the comments, I'm glad to answer any questions. I have found a lot of inspiration on PCPartpicker happy to give back.

Impossibilim is a nod to the late great Gord Downy of the Tragically Hip!

But where exactly does it state the prophet Jesus was God incarnate? You won't find it anywhere because Jesus was a messenger of God sent unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The man even denied it himself multiple times look it up.
(Mark 12:29-30 & 32) (Matt. 19:16-17)

I put together my first custom water cooled system in 2008 (Silverstone TJ10 soft tubing on a Striker 2 extreme MB). That system was upgraded with different motherboards and processors over 10 years but the cooling setup remained unchanged until this year when I moved into the PC-011 dynamic and build Link tube madness. Essentially Impossibium is my 3rd water cooled build.

I misread your question when I first responded. The 240 rad is actually not secured to the floor of the case, you need a little flexibility and movement to get everything in there. Once all the fittings are tight it's secure. The fans underneath are screwed to the clear case base and blow through the cut out(not visible) in the floor.

So the fans aren't pushed up against the rad, right? And there's some grilles in the way. Do you think this has any meaningful effect on performance? Looking at mine, it doesn't look like air can bleed out around the base so it might not be too bad. Could you potentially drill some holes and mount the fans to the rad through the bottom instead of using the clear base holes, and maybe rip out the hexagonal grill down there too?

Correct fans are not screwed into the 240 rad. There was no way to even fit ultra thin fans into the clear plastic base with the rad in there. I would say no meaningful difference in cooling, the temp are great on both counts and gpu when gaming. You could Dremel out the hexagon floor if you really want to attach fans to the rad but I'd say try it without first.
Good luck, let me know how you make out ... post pics.

I hear you there, The basement LED strip is RGB but I do not have an RGB splitter to hook it up. Default color is blue. I think If I can get it white it might look good. Or just turn it off and let the HD120 fans do their thing.

Love it! I'd love to see some more photos showing the loop path. I see CPU to left-hand side of the rad, through the temperature gauge, but that path behind out of that rad to the bottom rad interests me. :)

DAMN bro I want to get into watercooling but after seeing this I have unrealistically high standards and I already know i'm going to put money, sweat, and tears into my build and its not going to be anything close.

Hard to do this is not...expensive well unfortunately YES. Think and plan as much as you can ahead of time but you just have to come to terms with the fact that you cannot predict everything you'll need in advance unless you do an exact copy of another build. I have a bunch of parts I ordered and didn't end up using, just have to live with or try and sell on Kijiji. Good luck!

There are 3 things that you simply must have or this this build is impossible.
Zotac 1080 ti mini (length 8.3 inches) It is dual fan stock BTW
Barrow GPU water block(makes the GPU thin enough to slide the Rad under)
XSPC TX240 Rad at 20.1mm thick.

You could probably add a 4th..Link tube. It would be super hard to get some of those bends and bigger fittings in such a small space.

Temps are great. the Zotac 1080 ti mini would hit 80c while gaming fans running full out on stock air cooler. Haven't seen it above 57c on water. The 8700k is max 75c prime 95 1 hour. Just upped a pic of my Aida64 panel.

I wonder if there's a PC asmr video where the person sticks a microphone inside a pc case and all you can hear is the fans at a low rpm and even the buzzing of capacitors. that would be really weird. now that it's water-cooled, you can even hear the fluid going through the piping and pump. why did i just say that?

This build is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm awaiting my Louqe Ghost S1 and am building a parts list in the meantime. I intended to either use the Zotac 1080 Ti Mini or their ArcticStorm version (waterblock built-in), but the latter is difficult to find.

Hoping you can answer a couple questions for me. Where did you purchase the Barrow water block? What is the total height (second largest measurement). I have 143mm to work with, which I think the card and block combined will exceed, so I'm trying to determine if I need to buy another TopHat (extender) for the case.

Thanks in advance and for the inspiration for some parts I have been looking for.

I ordered my Barrow block from Aliexpress. Horrible experience, didn't ship for 3-4 weeks yet the retailer showed stock. Good news is PerformancePCS is selling Barrow now so I would recommend ordering from them.

The card and block height above the pcie slot is 5.5 inches(139.7mm).

Looking forward to seeing pics of your build in the Ghost..will be epic if you can get everything in there.

I would send them an e-mail requesting it...they posted a new products video on YouTube and said to let them know what your want from Barrow as they have a really large catalog of parts and they aren't sure what the market wants.

The board doesn't even have one 4 pin rgb only 1 addressable 3 pin which is useless. I'm using the controller that comes with the barrow GPU block and linked the pump rgb into it. Not ideal at all, need to order a 4 port RGB controller to do it properly.

What you see in the pics is actually attempt #3. First layout I actually had a 50mm res mounted to the 120 fan, it was crazy tight to get the runs in and out of the res. I made it work but I didn't like the look, it wasn't clean enough. That's the nice thing about using threaded link tube...you can easily reconfigure the loop and try something else, no waste.

The bottom rad is not passive there are 2 x 120 mm fans below it in the case's base. No issue with gpu getting warm as it's in the loop. All in all for how small the case is the cool in works better than I expected. Both the 120 Rad fan and the rear case fan are exhausting the warm air pushed in through the 240. The water temp is approximately 8-10c warmer than my PC 011 dynamic build that has 2 360 rads.

That's amazing! I'm planning on getting this case but the lacking compatibility for the 240mm rad has been holding me back as I plan on doing a custom loop to cool an overclocked i7 and a 1080 ti. Thanks for proof that possible!

Water temp will reach just over 40c while gaming. CPU between anywhere between 60-70c while gaming. GPU usually stays below 60c. I did some prime95 stability testing for the OC and CPU peaked at 85c.
This setup isn't about getting the lowest temps possible, I was more interested in water cooling the A1 to see if I could and having a quite ITX that could compete with it's big brother in gaming. Temps definitely higher than my other build in the PC-011. The slim rads are amazing to fit in tight spaces but it comes at a cooling capacity cost.

This isn't my main show piece system, it's a second PC I use at the cottage the fans are reused from an build to save a bit of $$.

Amazing freaking build. Honestly one of the best that I've seen on this website. How do you control the light strip on the bottom of the A1? I have same mobo and case and I can't plug it into the header because the header is a 3 pin. Do you use the controller with the HD120s?

Yeah unfortunately you can't use the motherboard header as it's for addressable RGB. I'm using the controller that came Barrow GPU block. It's an inline button style, cheap and available as a stand alone purchase.

This will be my first custom water cooled system. I have some questions, would appreciate it if u help me out.

Since I don't want to make it too complicated. I just want to water cool my CPU. as an GPU I have the RTX 2070 Gig. Gaming OC (280,4 mm lenght)

I was thinking of
EK-CoolStream SE 120 (Slim Single) - on the exhaust with In Win Polaris aluminum fan.
EK-XTOP SPC-60 PWM - Plexi (incl. pump) - mounted on the side fan with brackets from EK.

Combined with some sort of QUOTE "On the Q block in front, the small piece of tube on top is where the air bubbles can collect. it's fitted with a bitspower air exhaust fitting." instead of a reservoir.

But still I don't think it wil fit with the loops, maybe you have other suggestions.

The gfx card you are using will make it very challenging. I used all the space I saved by going with the super short 1080ti mini to get my pump in there. Only thing I can say is you just have to do trial and error.

Kudos to you Man!
I've built a system with the A1. I'd love to do what you did here, unfortunately my graphics card is a gigabyte Aorus RTX 2080ti extreme. It barely fits height-wise as it is/bit of an interference fit on the floor of the case- Of course with a water block and the card air cooler and shroud gone, I could make up room for the 240mm rad at the bottom, however the card is also long- unlikely to fit any kind of reservoir/pump at the front of the case.

Very nice build. I am also doing an Inwin A1 build. How did you get the 24 pin power supply connector to the motherboard so clean? I assume you are using Inwin provided PSU and cabling, did you mod the 24 pin cabling? Make it shorter?

I just want to know something, what kinds of tube and fittings you used in here?
I have no knowledge about those and waterlooping but I want to make my inwin a1 just like yours

I have tried to map out the looping you did then I notice, did you use the double female adaptor on the tubes? (I searched it). If so, what fittings did you use on those? I have browse bitspowers fittings but your combination of fitting makes my brain hurt hahaha. like the fitting in the middle of cpu out and gpu in. that double 90 you got there. I cant figure out if theres any compression fitting or just extender or what.

I know it will be painful to elaborate every combination you've got there. its fine. I just want some idea on how you've done it.

In this build many of the 90's are single rotary with a 5mm m-m spacer. This allows for link tube on each side. If you are buying fittings from scratch to make a build using link tube then order these. They make it super easy to connect link tube in tight spaces. If you build this setup please note water temps are higher that a normal setup in a case that has more room and airflow. Depending on the hardware and OC you intend run. If not overclocking this setup would make a great near silent liquid cooled build in the A1. To answer your question from other msg, I do not have any plans or loop run drawings, this layout was built on the fly, trial and error. It's pretty challenging, to make it work you have to assemble in a particular order. Good luck.

I used tons of the 2nd one male-male 5mm extenders to turn regular M-F 90's into M-M 90's. The only thing with going this way is that the side you use the 5mm extender on isn't going to be rotary, that means you will need the opposite side of that run to be rotary. If you buy the double rotary 90's I linked to it gives you a lot more options and makes it so easy to build with link tube.

Would you prefer going for double rotary 90's you've link if I'm going for the same build as yours?
also where do you fill the water? is it the mini res on top of Q-block?

And how about the pump, does your EK-XTOP Revo D5 RGB have included pump? coz when I try to search it, it comes with pump. makes me wonder why you listed another pump unless you change the pump that comes with it.

Yes buy dual rotary 90 for sure, way easier if you are going to use link tubes. For filling and bleeding air I recommend installing a temp res somewhere near the pump that you can remove after you have all the air out. I just bought the EK-XTOP separate I already had a D5 for it. All D5's are pretty much the same, get one with a SATA connector if you have a choice.

this link tubes says its 18mm in diameter. it means that its the hole diameter right?

how would I know if this are the fittings that I need to use? it says there that it is 5mm in thread lenght which Im not sure which lenght. coz I also found this which is 6mm thread lenght. which one should it be? and what is thread length?

The diameter of the tube doesn't matter, the tubes are threaded G1/4. All fittings are thread G1/4 it's a universal standard. You cannot make a mistake ordering wrong sizes because you aren't using fittings that go over the outside of the tube, you are screwing into the tube. 5 or 6mm G1/4 length makes no difference. Those 2 fittings you linked are the best one's to get, it just depends on the look you want. I prefer the first one with sharp 90's and 2 different rotary thicknesses. They will give you more options when it comes to getting the run lengths perfect. Some times you need just a little bit more or less to get a run looking perfect.

Until I saw this, nothing has impressed me... Same old Same ole stuff with different colors and RGB. Then I stumble on this while looking for fan config for my New A1+, you my friend are gifted, this is the nicest build I've seen period... Simply hands down, hats off incredible! I want to box up all my parts and send them to you to do this, I could never have the patience or skill to do this! Congrats my friend!

I was lucky enough to have met a long time water cooler who was getting out of the hobby. He supplied me with an enormous amount of fittings. This was the genesis of the idea to try building with link tubes. The obvious down side is the required number of fittings. It certainly allows for tubing in super tight spaces.

Link tube madness was my first attempt at hard line water-cooling. Getting complex bends measured and made takes alot of time and practice imo. You can see plenty of beginner builds that highlight how easy it is to make lousy looking bends. In short yes I think it's beginner friendly. There are a few things to learn but nothing overwhelming.

I can't say I looked at that alphacoo prior but I really wanted what I know is dead nuts reliable pump in the D5, highly important to me. I just looked at the Eisstation now doesn't "look" that great imo. Would fit in there and do the trick I'd say.